As we all know air pollution is responsible for a lot of damage and deterioration. A new study reveals that this very same air pollution from vehicles and industries is destroying the scent of flowers and thus putting a stop to the pollinating insects are no longer able to make their way to these sources. The scent trails are destroyed as flowers are no longer able to give their fragrance. This also explains why some pollinators such as bees, which feed on nectar of these floral plants have declined in some parts around the world. This has been seen particularly in the Netherlands and California in the US.

In the good old days (can't remember how far back!), when the environment was considerably much lesser, the fragrance produced by flowers could travel for around 1000+ meters. Contrary to this, with the pollution today, this fragrance barely makes it 200 or more meters. Thus, this results in pollinators unable to locate flowers for them to feed on its nectar. Sad but true, this leads to a vicious circle, where pollinators don't find food that is needed for their sustainment, and flowers plants suffer as it does not get pollinated enough to diversify.

Personal experience of some farmers, together with some research work, has shown that huge populations of bees, and butterflies have dwindled in number. Researchers believe that this is mainly due to the air pollution which peaks during summer.

In order to investigate this study further, they formed a mathematical model of how the fragrance of flowering plants travel with the wind. Basically the fragrance molecules are highly versatile and blend with the pollutants in the atmosphere such as nitrate radicals, ozone etc. These in turn destroy the smell that the flowers produce. What this means is that, contrary to traveling intact for some distances with the wind, the smells or fragrances get changed and flowers don't smell like flowers anymore. As a result of this, pollinators are forced to travel much more to search for these flowers and have to depend on sight as against smell.

The researchers calculated fragrance levels and the various distances that scents travel under different environmental conditions. And it became clear that the fragrance of flowers was destroyed due to air pollution. The higher the air pollution, the larger the destruction of fragrance of flowers.